New York Hasn't Left Lin

By

Jason Gay

Updated Dec. 18, 2012 5:02 p.m. ET

ENLARGE

Jeremy Lin and Tyson Chandler, one of Lin's former teammates.
Getty Images

He smiled. He got it.

It was late in the first half, and the Houston Rockets were cruising over the New York Knicks. Jeremy Lin, driving to the basket, was slammed at the baseline by his former teammate, Tyson Chandler. Big whistle. Flagrant foul. Shots plus possession. The Madison Square Garden crowd howled.

When Lin arrived at the line, boos hailed down. The boos had only been scattered when Lin was introduced before the game—most of the 19,033 in attendance had been civil enough to realize that what Lin had done last season had been briefly extraordinary. Though cold business had intervened, and Lin had pushed on to Houston, he deserved New York's respect. They cheered him.

But not now. Lin bricked the first free throw. The boos thickened with a New York edge.

That's when Lin smiled. It was a smile familiar to anyone who had been in this arena last February, when Lin, an undrafted, twice-dumped point guard sleeping on his brother's couch, temporarily transformed a moribund team into an unselfish, frantic thrill. Lin's smile had revealed itself during those crazy victories over the Lakers and the Mavericks, when Lin outplayed experienced pros and showed he belonged. They called this rise "Linsanity" and it was certifiably Linsane, as fun as this franchise had been in a decade. And though Lin became a global story, there was something indisputably New York about it: the underdog who discovered how improbable this city could be, how quick it was to embrace a determined stranger.

But it cut both ways. Now Lin was a stranger in a red jersey and red shorts. The Knicks hadn't lost a step without him—they'd gotten better, in possession of the conference's best record. Linsanity wasn't New York's thing anymore. It was Houston's.

Booooooooooooooooooooooooo.

After the game, Lin said he knew this was coming. February was February. New York was New York. The opponent was always going to get booed here. "It was actually a lot better than I thought," he said.

Lin wound up with 22 points, eight rebounds and four steals—a complete game—and Houston blew out the Knicks for the second time this season. Lin was quick to point out that New York was playing short-handed—no Carmelo Anthony, no Amar'e Stoudemire, no Iman Shumpert. "They're not their full team," he said.

But it was still satisfying. How could it not be satisfying? This was a mid-December basketball game but it was still going to be treated as a referendum. Had Lin come into the Garden and slumped, the schadenfreude and told ya so's would have been intense. Even after Monday's performance you could hear the second guesses. Let's see him do it over 82 games. Let's see him do it in the playoffs. Houston's just a .500 team. Raymond Felton's still better.

This was just defensive. Lin rolled in on Monday night and did the thing you're supposed to do in New York: take in the size of it all, and play big. This isn't easy. Nine hundred miles away in Nashville, Tenn., the Jets were putting the final humiliations on a failed season. Mark Sanchez, a rookie sensation not long ago, looks forlorn, overcome. The New York grind appears to have eaten him alive.

In his abridged New York moment, Lin showed he could handle the grind. The energy of the city seemed to lift him. He admitted a while back that he never imagined himself leaving this town. He loved it here. On Monday, he wasn't fazed by boos. He took the hard fouls. He noted that he and Chandler were friends. He said that basketball was a competition.

"He hit me hard," he said. "I still kept coming."

He smiled again. Jeremy Lin may have moved on from New York, but there's still plenty of New York in Jeremy Lin.

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